I wouldn't bother with a blu ray drive. At the moment very few things utilize blu ray, so in my opinion it is a waste of money. Just wait blu ray to become more prominent and buy a new drive, by then drives will be much cheaper too.

I think 8 GB of RAM is a bit much for current programs, unless you are going to do some activities that you know are extremely RAM intensive. I'd buy 4 GB, save yourself the money, and then if you need additional RAM later it's not that big of a deal to buy more.

Wait until you're within like a couple weeks of truly buying and ask around here again about a proposed build. If you were to consider something now with your budget, you should be looking at Intel's Sandybridge platform...it's the best thing out right now with their Core i5 2500K and Core i7 2600K processors.

Later this year , AMD will release their competing line, which is Bulldozer. Since you have some time before you buy, wait for Bulldozer and see how they stackup against Sandybridge. Start your brainstorming then because technology will change and competition may be driving prices down.

The Radeon 6950 is a really hot card right now as many are BIOS flashing them to be a Radeon 6970....myself included. On Nvidia's front, the GTX 570 is a stellar card.

4GB of RAM is quite sufficient.


Just keep reading up on Sandybridge and Bulldozer. The end of this year will probably see Intel's Sandybridge die shrink, which is codenamed Ivy Bridge.